


Fraught with Danger

by orphan_account



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arson, F/M, First Kiss, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-17 21:25:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16104089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: An alternate universe where Violet and Quigley vow not to let Olaf schemes endanger them or their siblings any longer... at any cost.





	Fraught with Danger

Violet huffed as she inched her makeshift crampon up the icy face of Mount Fraught. Her breath was clearly visible as an effervescent snowy cloud and her throat burned with exertion.

“Could we rest for a bit, Quigley?” she asked her climbing partner.

“Of course,” he replied with a smile. “It’s not like Olaf is going anywhere soon.”

“Except to hell,” replied the Baudelaire through gritted teeth.

The children both chuckled as they moved sideways to a widening ledge that was largely devoid of accumulated precipitation. Above them was a slightly angled awning of rock and behind them was an alcove that sheltered them from the turbulent highland winds that buffeted mercilessly.

“Sunny must be so frightened up there,” Violet said as she backed into the alcove.

“We’ll help her soon,” Quigley replied. “Don’t worry, we’ll get this taken care of.”

Violet was slightly annoyed with her friend’s tone. “It’s my job to worry. I’m the eldest sibling in my family, and my parents explicitly charged me with my brother’s and sister’s care. I’ve failed them yet again.”

Quigley shook his head. “No, Vi,” he said softly. “They failed you.”

“How can you say something like that?!” she shrieked. “Explain yourself!”

“Think about it,” the Quagmire replied. “We’re surrounded by mysterious figures from our parents’ past and the specters of their actions haunt us to this day. Neither of us knows the whole story, but the truth is is that they left without preparing us for the reality we are facing.”

The inventress snorted. “Arson, kidnapping, murder, is that a reality anyone can prepare their children for?”

“They could have if they were honest about their work.”

Tears dribbled from Violet’s eyes. “I don’t know anymore. I just want Sunny and Klaus to be safe. Is that too much to ask for?”

Quigley gently wiped a tear from Violet’s cheek. The young woman flinched slightly and laid a hand on his lap.

“Did I hurt you?” Quigley asked in a concerned tone. 

“No,” said Violet simply. “But after how Olaf treated me in ‘The Marvelous Marriage’, not to mention how he struck Klaus…”

Her voice trailed off like a piece of detritus borne aloft on the wintry winds of the Hinterlands. 

“I’m sorry,” the cartographer apologized profusely. “I’m so sorry. That wasn’t my intention at all.” He shifted away uncomfortably.

“I know you didn’t mean to make me feel that way,” Violet said. “But I do feel a certain way about you. I just can’t find the words for it.”  
“Surely, you don’t mean…”

The eldest Baudelaire answered her friend by swiftly leaning towards him and contacting his lips with hers. While it only lasted a few seconds, the moment seemed to be etched into eternity as the two lovers’ eyes became transfixed upon each other.

“That kiss was more articulate than one of Dora’s couplets,” Quigley breathed.

“I had a crush on her too,” Violet confessed. “I never got the chance to tell her though. Another joy stolen by Olaf.”

Quigley wore a puzzled expression. 

“Why are you telling me that?”

“Because my love for her and you aren’t mutually exclusive,” Violet explained. “You are both wonderful and I can’t stand the thought of evil separating us.”

“In that case, we should fight back against the evil,” Quigley suggested. “When we reach the summit, either we’re leaving alive or Olaf is.”

“That’s a stipulation I can endorse.”

The Baudelaire let her fur-lined hood fall back and she reached into her breast pocket for her ribbon. As she began tying her hair back in the chilly air, a pink oblong projectile falling at terminal velocity struck Quigley’s thigh.

“Ow!” he exclaimed. “What was that?” 

Violet swiftly knotted her ribbon before retrieving the offending object from Quigley’s lap. Upon closer inspection, it appeared to be a freshly sliced and salted salmon that had been smeared with cream cheese on one side.

“I think this is lox,” she pronounced.

“Lox? As in cooked salmon?” Quigley asked incredulously. “Salmon are native to the Stricken Stream, but how would they be filleted and prepared? Unless…”

Their eyes widened with the understanding of a new revelation in this latest episode of their lives. Violet was the first to voice her hypothesis out loud, and embraced Quigley tightly.

“It means Sunny’s alive, you dimwit! Only she could think of cooking something so delicious in this wasteland.”

“I was about to say that too,” Quigley pouted. “I’m not a dimwit, I just have sore thighs. That lox didn’t help with that.”

“Awww,” Violet cooed. “Well we’d better get going if we want to have any after we deal with Olaf.”

Quigley nodded and rubbed his struck thigh gingerly. The two children scooted along the ledge until they found a suitable platform to restart their climb, and began ascending to the four thousand meter peak of Mount Fraught. As the rose above the other other peaks of the Mortmains, a vast landscape revealed itself in immense glory. The Stricken Stream, initially frozen at altitude, wound around the Hinterlands in lazy curves, making its way to the sea. Stretched beyond were the vast blue yonders of the sky and ocean, tinged golden and burgundy by the mid-afternoon sun. Dotting the vast untamed wilderness were specks that reminded them of their past tribulations. The ruins of Caligari Carnival and Heimlich Hospital smoldered in the distance, as did the mysterious VFD Headquarters. A vast cloud of what appeared to be ash was actually a migratory swarm of crows, moving towards the Village of Fowl Devotees beyond the horizon. An oversized cemetery that was presently consumed by flames was actually Prufrock Preparatory. Violet and Quigley had scarcely any time or energy to marvel at this perspective of nature, but instead devoted it solely to reaching the top and ending Olaf’s reign of terror. As the mid-afternoon sun grew ever lower on the western horizon, the children climbed higher, unwavering in their determination. At last, they reached the base of a small plateau that was the site of Olaf’s camp.

“How do you suppose we can take out multiple adults at the same time?” Quigley asked in a whisper.

“I’ve got that figured that out,” Violet replied. “We don’t. We let nature do that for us.”

“What do you mean?” Quigley asked again. “Are you being cryptic on purpose?”

“You’ll see,” Violet said with a smile.

Motioning her friend to stay where he was, she moved stealthily towards the camp’s supplies, which were conveniently stacked outdoors in marked wooden trunks. Violet grabbed ahold of a trunk labeled “Esme’s Feminine Supplies: PRIVATE!” and brought it to the edge of the plateau. With a swift kick, it fell hundreds of feet and smashed upon the snowy rocks below, splaying its indecent contents everywhere.

“That was easy,” Quigley muttered.

The Quagmire joined his partner in disposing of the rest of the bulk supply boxes. Although the naturally arid and freezing conditions near the summit of Mount Fraught would have assisted in refrigeration, they found to their surprise that Olaf’s troupe had packed scarcely any food, perishable or otherwise. Instead, the boxes were labeled mostly with obscure initialisms such as Various Finery Disguises, Ventriloquist Fraternization Dances, Very Fancy Doilies and Valid Fire Depot. Despite the variety of esoterica that these names suggested, the contents that now littered the mountainside consisted mostly of an extensive wardrobe that was lacking in cold weather clothing and green cigar boxes. As Violet disposed of the last box, she saw the hook-handed hench man exiting a tent as walking towards the makeshift field kitchen that Sunny was working at. She quickly ducked behind a snowdrift to avoid detection and motioned for Quigley to do the same. The then two overheard the henchman and Sunny conversing through a break in the wind.

“What’s for dinner, baby?” Fernald asked gruffly.

“Not baby!” Sunny insisted. “Lox y helado.”

“Snow cones?” the henchman snorted. “In this weather?”

The toddler glared accusingly and gestured to her workstation as if to emphasize her lack of proper ingredients and kitchen utensils. 

“Okay, okay,” he relented. “But Count Olaf will be very displeased with this meal.”

“Merde,” the toddler murmured.

“You watch your mouth, baby,” Fernald warned menacingly. “The others might not get your baby talk, but I do. This insubordination won’t fly when Olaf has your fortune.” 

The youngest Baudelaire wanted to shriek another insult at her joint captor, but she held her tongue. Fernald quietly walked back towards the parallel row of tents, taking no notice of the slightly deformed drift that obscured Violet and Quigley. However, instead of entering his tent, he continued over to a gravel lot behind and to the left of the children, where Olaf had parked his elongated sedan. Its engine was still idling and the radio played a muffled rendition of American Pie. By depressing a recessed lever, the hook-handed man opened the trunk that the Baudelaires had once hidden in and retrieved a case of wine bottles. 

“Should we wait until they drink themselves into a stupor?” Quigley inquired.

“The sun’s going to set soon,” Violet whispered. “We can’t wait around and freeze to death. Stay silent and follow my lead.”

The adolescents moved with their torsos bent nearly parallel to the ground to maintain speed while sneaking. Thankfully, no fresh snow had fallen on the mountain for quite some time, meaning that their footsteps were muffled until they were mere yards from the henchman.

“It’s always me,” he was grumbling under his breath, unaware of the children who now surrounded him on two sides. “‘Go get the wine, Hooky’; ‘Go air out my underwear, Hooky,’; ‘Go bury those carnival freaks in a shallow ditch, Hook Meister.’ I hope I get my cut soo- Huh! What are you two doing here?!”

“Lights out, Fernald,” Violet proclaimed. 

Before the henchman could even react with a cry for help, Quigley executed a well-aimed kick at his lower back, causing the arsonist to lose his balance on the icy gravel. The resulting fall placed his head within the trunk and his shoulders on the outer tailgate. Without hesitation, the Baudelaire placed her left hand on the trunk’s cover and slammed it down onto the neck of her tormentor’s accomplice, rendering him unconscious. 

“Is he going to be okay?” Quigley asked once Fernald’s limbs had ceased twitching.

“Who cares?” Violet shrugged. “Besides, he helped burn down the only hospital for miles. He deserves whatever comes.”

Quigley seemed reassured by this explanation and proceeded to unload the wine bottles that was being unloaded. 

“Were these a part of your plan?” he asked.

“Not initially,” the inventress admitted. “But I suppose they can aid us.”

She carefully examined an individual bottle while grasping it in her hands. Its label read, “Actor’s Choice 1925, 55% Alcohol By Volume.” 

“This will work,” Violet said. “Can you find any matches and rags?”

Quigley nodded and found the materials in less than a moment. In the hoarder’s nest that was Count Olaf’s trunk, dirty socks and bandanas were in no short supply. In addition, Esme seemed to be partial to smoking cigars, no doubt simply because they were “in”. A loose tray of her strike-anywhere matches rolled out on its own as the Quagmire tugged at a pile of ripped pantyhose.

“I assume you’re making Molotov cocktails,” Quigley observed as Violet began uncorked each liter-sized bottle. “Are you sure about this?”  
“I’ve never been more sure about anything, Quigley,” the Baudelaire reaffirmed. “We need to act quickly if we want to maintain the element of surprise.”

“Of course, Vi,” Quigley agreed. 

The children doused a few ripped socks with a portion of the bottles’ contents and inserted them into the necks of the bottles. After ensuring the outer portions were sufficiently frayed, Violet struck a match on her flannel undercoat and whispered her words of retribution.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Your evil flame has reached the end of its wick, and allow my own hasten its demise.”

With that utterance, the teenage duo unleashed their first volley onto the camp of their arch-nemesis. Violet’s flaming deterrent struck the side of the tent nearest to her, collapsing it partially and condemning it to a wall of flames. Esme, who was incidentally wearing a dress resembling towering flames, crawled out of the blaze haggardly, wheezing for fresh air. 

“Immolation is SO not in!” she cried. 

Meanwhile, Quigley’s firebomb had bounced off the tent nearest to him. Unbeknownst to him, this was Fernald’s and its tauter moorings kept it more secure than Esme’s. The bottle’s new trajectory concluded by intersecting Esme’s face, a phrase which here means, “an act that various scholars and diplomats have labelled a war crime.” The fashionista and former financial advisor wailed in pure agony as shards of red-hot glass embedded themselves in her head and the atmosphere around her turned to aerosolized flame. 

“That’s gruesome,” Quigley paled as Esme flailed in her melting dress.

“We aren’t doing anything she wouldn’t have done to us, if given the chance,” Violet reminded him. “Fire fights fire if it’s a controlled burn, and there isn’t anything here to burn except the tents and the clothes of the troupe.”

“What about the metaphorical fires, Violet?” Quigley asked pointedly. “The ashes may smolder here tomorrow, but the trauma and rage will be etched into our minds for eternity.”

“Save the philosophizing for your shrink,” Violet responded with equal disdain. “We’ll nitpick our ethics if we ever make it back to civilization.”

This seemed to snap Quigley back to the unfortunate reality of their situation.

“Of course,” he replied meekly. “I’m sorry, Violet. I want to rescue Sunny and defeat Olaf as much as you do. I just hope we aren’t falling to his level.”

“I understand, Quigley,” Violet replied, gently grasping his hands. “But I don’t think there are levels. Just the fog of war and the abyss of neutrality.”

The two children might have contemplated these words forever if Olaf had not burst out with a roar from his tent, which was at the far end of the camp. Quickly, they prepared a second volley and threw two more projectiles. The one thrown by Violet landed at the foot of the entrance flaps, setting them ablaze, while Quigley’s grazed the villain’s shoulder and exploded in a flash behind him.

“Damn it!” the cartographer exclaimed. “I thought I had him!”

Just as Violet was about to respond, the Count halted his advance and gazed intently at the flames creeping up along the canvas of his tent. To her and Quigley’s amazement, he flung himself onto the tent flaps, rolling his body in a futile attempt to extinguish them.

“Why is he suddenly concerned with putting out a fire?” Quigley asked.

“Maybe we should approach him to find out,” Violet suggested. “If all else goes wrong, we have our crampons to defend ourselves.”

As they walked cautiously into the camp, past Fernald’s spotless domicile and the charred corpse of the city’s sixth most important financial advisor, Olaf screamed at them piteously.

“You idiots! My portable wine cellar is in there!”

“Big whoop,” Quigley said uncomprehendingly. “I guess you’ll be as sober as you are penniless now.”

Violet’s eyes widened in realization, however. She hooked an arm around Quigley and rushed to Sunny, who was sniffling on her chef’s bench.

“I don’t have any time to explain,” she said hurriedly to her sister. “But we have to go now.”

With Sunny safe in her arms, Violet rushed forwards, making a beeline for the edge of the plateau. Quigley followed suit, knocking out a few pegs from Fernald’s tent to distract Olaf in case he decided to pursue them.

“No!!!” the Count roared as he caught by the loosened canvas that fluttered on a strong breeze.

“How did you know to do that?” Violet asked breathlessly.

“The air currents around Mount Fraught pick up speed at sunset due to the drop in temperature,” he explained. “And if I’m right, they should increase again in intensity and change direction in 3, 2, 1…”

Almost on cue, the breeze transformed into a gale-force assault on the peak of the Mortmains. Unable to move, the children laid face down on the snowy bosom of the mountain, embracing it for their very lives. Olaf, however, was not so lucky. The canvas he had become entangled in acted as a sail, sending him directly into his inferno of a tent with immense force. This caused a few kegs that were already weakened by heat exposure to rupture, atomizing liters of alcohol. Seconds later, a fireball approximately ten meters in diameter consumed the entire campsite in a monumental explosion. Violet, Quigley and Sunny were barely shielded by a few snowdrifts they had passed. 

“Is that it?” Violet asked as she comforted her sister. “Is it over?”

Quigley beheld the ruins of the villain’s former campsite. Much of the snow and ice near the epicenter of the explosion had been melted and stripped away, reforming into icicles further away. There was absolutely no trace of any tents, and the sedan’s windows had all cracked from the debris thrown about. The only surviving remnant from the camp proper was a tattered piece of ashen canvas that formed the shape of an eye.

“It is,” Quigley said solemnly. “It finally is.” 

“Absol,” Sunny murmured, by which she meant something along the lines of, “You both did what you had to. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Sunny,” Violet replied quietly.

The three children sat and watched the sun dip below the western sea. As the rays of light departed, they felt a sense of calm wash over them.

“Quigley, could we get back down faster if we had a toboggan?” Violet asked. “I think I saw one in Olaf’s trunk.”

The Quagmire’s eyes lit up.

“Of course! Let’s get going before Klaus starts wondering what we’re doing.”

“Not to mention dinner, of course,” Violet said smilingly.

“Lox!” Sunny interjected.

Laughing with delight, the children walked to the sedan and made preparations for the descent, knowing that the worst of their misfortunes were at an end.


End file.
